Did Lilliputians Really Exist...?

A recent discovery of thousands of some ancient bones of humans discovered in Palau, an island in the Pacific Ocean hints at some such probability… The bones indicate that the inhabitants were of particularly small size. (See pictures of the Palau remains)

The remains are between 900 and 2,900 years old and align with Homo sapiens. However, the older bones are tiny and exhibit several traits considered primitive, or archaic, for the human lineage. Lee Berger, the paleoanthropologist at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, who discovered the skeletons was on vacation in 2006, kayaking around rocky islands about 600 kilometers east of the Philippines.

(Watch the video from the National Geographic site: : "Ancient Little People Found?")

The caves were littered with bones that had been dislodged by waves and piled like driftwood. Others had remained buried deep in the sandy floor, and more, including several skulls, were cemented to the cave walls. Two sets of human bones have been found in the Palauan caves. The most recent remains were found near the entrance to one of the caves and appear normal in size. Older bones found deeper in the caves are stranger and much smaller.

The smaller, older bones represent people who were 90 to 120 cm) tall and weighed between 32 and 41 kilograms. The diminutive people were in fact similar in size to the so-called Hobbit (a separate human species, Homo floresiensis) discovered in National Geographic Society-supported excavations on the Indonesian island of Flores in 2003. Aside from being tiny, the Palauan bones show that some of these people lacked chins and had deep jaws, large teeth, and small eye sockets.

However, the estimated brain size of the early Palauans is about twice the size of the hobbit brain. This and several other features, including the shape of the face and hips, suggest that the Palauan bones should be classified as Homo sapiens. Palau lacks indigenous terrestrial mammals and large reptiles that early Palauans might have used for food. Archaeological records indicate fishing was not a local activity until about 1,700 years ago, around the time bigger bones appear in the caves. The early Palauans' limited diet, combined with a tropical climate, absence of predators, a small founding population, and genetic isolation, may have produced, these very odd features and very small body size, opine the scientists. The Palauan remains suggest these features may just be a consequence of insular dwarfism, a shrinking process that some scientists attribute to the stresses of a small island environment.

Refer the image above where a newfound skull from Palau (center) is compared with a model of a modern human female skull (left) and a model of Homo floresiensis' skull (right).

If the interpretation of the Palauan remains is correct, the find may add more fuel to the debate over whether people like the Lilliputians, in the Gulliver’s Travels could have really existed.

Read The National Geographic Story: “Ancient Bones of Small Humans Discovered in Palau".